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> Why do you want to share your opinions on controversial topics? What do you get out of it? No one cares about your opinions on incest except to dunk on you. Y

> Why do you want to share your opinions on controversial topics? What do you get out of it? No one cares about your opinions on incest except to dunk on you. You're not going to revolutionize society's opinions on incest. One person won't, but echo chambers definitely do solidify people's opinions. I'm old enough to have seen popular opinions on a lot of issues move during my own lifetime, and things really start to get extreme at about the point where people feel like they can't oppose the trend. That happens pretty much regardless of whether the new or old opinion was "right" or "wrong". And if the accepted opinion started out largely "right", it very often ends up getting pushed into a more extreme version that's closer to "wrong". It's called "groupthink". It's one reason that having persistent handles isn't necessarily as good an idea as you'd think in online discussions. Which is itself an opinion close to some danger areas right now...

gremlinsinc 4y ago
I feel like groupthink could be a good thing in the old context where you were part of a community and discussing these things was something you did in the checkout line at the market and people would either nod, or give you odd stares or be like WTF, now that everything is online though, every opinion can find like minded people to champion it, and bad idea-makers are emboldened to take a bad idea and make it a meme and it grows and builds momentum. QAnon is a good example of this. When you had a smaller pool of people and their political/religious backgrounds were more wide and open you'd be more thoughtful about what you say, and discussions were more academic less political, but now it seems everyone has a motive behind what they say or do and everything is about being grouped under socialist, neoliberal, capitalist, patriot, nationalist, ring-wing nutjob, extremist, etc... My point is the problem is online echo chambers, if we had a way to build larger but similar wide-view communication platforms maybe we'd have less politicization but then people probably wouldn't use it because that's what they're seeking an outlet for their political idealogies.

gremlinsinc 4y ago

I feel like groupthink could be a good thing in the old context where you were part of a community and discussing these things was something you did in the checkout line at the market and people would either nod, or give you odd stares or be like WTF, now that everything is online though, every opinion can find like minded people to champion it, and bad idea-makers are emboldened to take a bad idea and make it a meme and it grows and builds momentum. QAnon is a good example of this. When you had a smaller pool of people and their political/religious backgrounds were more wide and open you'd be more thoughtful about what you say, and discussions were more academic less political, but now it seems everyone has a motive behind what they say or do and everything is about being grouped under socialist, neoliberal, capitalist, patriot, nationalist, ring-wing nutjob, extremist, etc... My point is the problem is online echo chambers, if we had a way to build larger but similar wide-view communication platforms maybe we'd have less politicization but then people probably wouldn't use it because that's what they're seeking an outlet for their political idealogies.